


Red as Blood and Roses

by aleope_and_so_on



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e09 Lady of the Lake, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, I Tried, basically my take on freya's story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleope_and_so_on/pseuds/aleope_and_so_on
Summary: Freya has been taught to fear two things: red, like blood-colored fabric, and gold, like the kind that shines in her own eyes. She's been taught fairy-tales too; truth is buried deep there, and it is always nice to believe in something beautiful. The most important thing she has been taught is this: good will triumph, eventually, and the monster always dies, in the end.
Relationships: Freya/Merlin (Merlin)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Red as Blood and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure how to do the warnings on this, because Freya definitely dies in the end. Also, a creep accosts her but he doesn't get a chance to do anything other than be creepy? Sorry, spoilers, but she dies in the show too and the backstory is alluded to, so. I thought she was an interesting character and her story made me cry. Naturally, I decided to add my own ideas to it. Still new to this, still don't really know what I'm doing, still having a blast anyway. Don't own the characters.

“Beware, girl. There are monsters in the dark.”

She huddles closer to her mother in the twilight, leaning in to the warmth of the fire and soft steady presence. She likes the stories of the monsters best. The way evil is always bested by cleverness and strength, by loyalty and kindness; the way the dark is always driven back by the light. The woman smiles at her daughter’s eager upturned face, and a flash of red from the fire catches her gaze. Her eyes darken and she rubs her wrist where the druid mark darkens her skin, glancing around their meager camp once more, ever wary. The little girl tugs on her mother’s sleeve.

“The story, Mother!”

Her mother hesitates for a moment, eyes still dark.

“The story I have to tell you is scary, my little strawberry. But never fear,” her mouth tightens, “the monster will die, in the end.”

And through the night she weaves a fairytale for her daughter. She tells her of a beast with terrible wicked claws and massive fangs and piercing eyes and a golden crown, who lives in a castle in a kingdom where she must never go. She tells her that the beast was happy, once, long before he was even a beast at all. She tells her of the death of his mate, how it drove him mad and twisted him until all that was left was hatred and a need for revenge and a desire to kill. She tells her druid daughter how he hunted down the magic and murdered them - the young and the old, the weak and the strong, the innocent and the guilty. She feels her daughter press closer to her side as she describes the flames of the pyre and the axeman’s overflowing basket and the drowned spirits crowding the wells and the rivers of blood running through the streets. She instills in her child a fear of monsters in red, red capes.

Her daughter’s breath catches in fright, and she pauses a moment to wonder if she is doing this all wrong. But there are no instructions, no map for when your people are being slaughtered for breathing, for when your daughter bears the cursed mark that brands the wrists of the dead. And all fairytales have a moral, do they not? Do not put trust in strangers and love is found below the surface and maybe it will take a hundred years but everything will be alright. After all, the monster always dies, in the end. So she carries on, spinning a tale where the beast-king is defeated and a new king reigns and people are free, because she can’t help hoping it will be true. Her daughter falls into a fitful sleep but her mother doesn’t mind. Better to have nightmares over a fairytale with a false ending than because you watched your family murdered in your stead while they bought you time to run. The girl’s nightmares distract from her own, anyway.

They travel for years until they come to a small town nestled at the base of mountains, tucked away beside a lake. The girl is older now, and warier. She has been raised on a diet of fear and fairytales, and knows for herself now why her mother always cloaked the monsters in red. But she is still a girl, and her mother refuses to stop her from playing with the other children in the quiet town. She warns her to _keep her head d_ _own_ and _not do anything rash_ and ties tight around her wrist a wide bracelet, to hide her mark. She makes her young, precious, druid daughter promise to never take it off.

“I won’t, Mother!” her daughter smiles at her, blindingly, the promise falling so lightly from her lips. Her mother offers a weak smile in return. _Remember the monsters, my girl. Be careful._

But she says instead, “I love you, Freya,” and watches as her daughter runs off, because it may be the last time she gets to tell her and love is more important, in the end. Cautious words never help the heroes, but love does. And if this is the last thing she will say to her daughter, as it always might be, then that is what she wants her to remember. _I love you, Freya_.

The little girl finds the other children easily enough. They are grouped around a well in the center of the little village square, and they do not hesitate to open their ranks. Within minutes she is playing with them and laughing. They scatter throughout the square in a game of tag, all against one poor child who giggles as he runs and hides. He is caught, inevitably, and dragged back to the well in a play fight. The children cheer and laugh at how easily their monster is captured. When the town bell rings to signal dusk they scatter again, this time to their respective homes, promising that _tomorrow the game will last longer_ and _next time there will be a better sorcerer_ and _they were glad to have met the silent girl_ and _tomorrow she could be the druid monster, if she wanted._

The girl winds her way to the little room she shares with her mother, confused. All the children’s words pick at her, so contrary to her mother’s definition of monsters. They seem to have gotten the roles reversed, somehow, and she isn’t quite sure how it happened. They pull red blankets around their shoulders and make sticks into wooden swords, and the only game they play is catch the sorcerer. They call the druids monsters, and magic evil and twisted.

She wants to yell at them, to say that her mother’s magic is not evil, that it ignites the little campfires and lights the way in the dark; to say that she is not evil, that her magic has done nothing more harmful than change a blueberry to a strawberry. But she does not say anything, because the well in the center of the town seems to contain a sobbing ghost that none of the other children can hear, and she knows her mother’s fairytales by heart. She does not tell her mother, either, because the woman is always looking over her shoulder and flinches at the sight of anything red but seems so happy that her daughter has found friends. So she is silent, and has no comforting words of admonition when she starts to wonder what evil really is, when the words and simple beliefs of all the children start to weigh heavily against her mother’s fairytales. She believes them still, that good will out and the monster will fall, in the end - she just isn’t quite so sure who the monster is anymore.

They stay in the little town by the lake for years. Her mother has made herself into a midwife of sorts, but she herself is failing now. She is not old, not in Freya’s eyes, but then her mother is made of fairy tales, and fairy tales never die. Nonetheless, the woman has a cough that will not be cured, and her threadbare dress does little to hide how thin she has become. The girl does not want her mother to go, to leave her behind, because the monster is the one who falls in the end and that would mean that maybe the children and the villagers were right all along. Whenever that thought comes to her she pushes it away as fast as she can and rubs the tattered bracelet around her wrist absentmindedly. Her promise may have been made far more easily and lightheartedly than her mother wished, but it was still a promise, and the bracelet had never been taken off. Her mark had never been shown.

She enters the little town’s tavern one night. It is pouring outside, with crashes of thunder and furious bolts of lightning. To be honest, she would rather brave the storm than the little pub with all its leering, drunken faces, but a friend has given her a job to do in exchange for dinner to take home for the ill. The girls her age are kind to her, as her mother fails. They do what they can and ignore the whispers of _witch_. She doesn’t want to accept their aid - to accept help is to owe someone a debt that you will one day have to repay, and she has nothing to give. She has no choice in the matter, though - her mother cannot tend to the village as she used to, and the little she earns they cannot go without.

Her shift is done as the storm draws to a close. The battle between thunder and lightning has moved off into the distance, and only the rain remains, pulsing a heavy beat against the wooden walls. It must be close to midnight, and she has left her mother alone for hours, so she accepts the basket of food without complaint. When the other girl swings a red, red cloak around her shoulders as well, with little breaths of _how well the color matches your dress_ and _it’s still pouring out there, you_ _know_ , she hesitates. The girl smiles, sadly - _it’s a gift_ \- and she remembers that her mother had cured this girl’s betrothed, laid low by fever. So she smiles easily, blindingly, in return, trying her best to ignore the color and the lingering suspicion that this is one more debt she can’t repay. _Thank you_.

The path to the little house her mother found is dark and winding, twisting through the forest on the outskirts of the town. She sighs, but it is midnight now and no-one is around to see her in the rain; she is hidden by the trees. A tiny ball of light gleams into existence in her hand, her eyes glinting fiery gold. She resettles the basket on her arm and pulls the hood of the cloak further down over her face, passing beneath the dark-ravaged branches like a blood tinted shadow.

She doesn’t see the man behind her, walking just outside the light’s reach of her will-o-the-wisp, doesn’t smell the alcohol on his breath, not until a hand clamps onto her shoulder. She spins, light flickering out, and her feet want to run. But he holds her in place, leering at her in the dark. _It’s late for a pretty girl like you to be_ _out alone. I might know a shortcut, my dear_. It is pouring still and her mother is ill and she knows not to leave her path and this man is a stranger and everything compounds and multiplies and she is utterly terrified and her magic responds. Her eyes burn the color of kings’ crowns, and the wolf in man’s shape is blasted backwards. Her feet are freed and she flees as fast as her legs will carry her.

She is not fast enough.

There is someone else there, a woman, screaming about a sun - _her son_ \- and a witch - _you killed him_ \- and a curse that she will carry for the rest of her life - _monster_ \- and there are eyes the color of the pyre piercing her as she falls into the darkness. She has just enough time to remember the rule that her mother taught her, one of the few she was taught of magic. _It’s only fair, my little strawberry. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. A son_ _for a son._

When she wakes she wonders why the sorceress did not kill her. When the clock strikes midnight she does not have to wonder any longer _. A monster with terrible wicked claws and massive fangs and piercing eyes_ and she has no crown, but wears a pelt as black as night and wings jagged as dragons’. She was working late at the tavern that night too. The girl who had given her the red, red cloak is the first to fall.

She wonders who the sorceress is taking revenge on, her or the world. When the bounty hunters begin to arrive in the little demon-plagued village, she does not have to wonder any longer. They all wear red.

They catch her. It doesn’t take long. They parade her through the streets of the ravaged village in a cage with iron bars, boasting of how the _monster is captured_ and the village is _safe now_. She can see her mother on the edge of the crowd, dress covering a thin, shaking frame and a bloodstained handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Her mother is safe now, the monster locked away, and she can’t help but feel relieved. She just wishes she had gotten to say goodbye.

They take her to the castle in the kingdom to which she was never to go. She is left in the rain, in chains, in an iron cage in the streets, and she is cold, so cold. She is not sure what to make of the boy who comes to free her. His eyes glow golden and he wears bright red around his neck like a collar, and she cannot help but trust him because _here is a monster just like her_. He rambles as they escape and she catches a name - _Merlin_ \- and then they are running through deep passages beneath the castle and his jacket is around her shoulders and there is a promise to _be back tomorrow_ and he is gone. If she is entirely honest with herself, she is not expecting him to come back at all. But he does. She tries to tell him to _stay away_ , that she is _dangerous_ , and he laughs and makes the candle flames dance around her in rings.

_It’s not something to be afraid of_ , he tells her. She should leave, she knows she should - there are people dying every night and it is her fault - but aren’t monsters supposed to be selfish? So she stays and waits for him to return. Somehow in her mind his golden eyes merge with the sun, and his blue with the sky, and she feels at home when he is with her, at peace for the first time in years.

He asks her what she wants to eat one morning, smiling at her so widely that she can believe she is loved. _Love_. Her mother waves from her mind’s eye and _strawberries_ slips off of her tongue before she can catch it. Grinning shyly, the boy offers her a rose instead. _Oh_. Flowers are for princesses and bright days when nothing can go wrong, not monsters crouched in the shadows. So what does that say about her?

_That’s not a strawberry._ He shrugs, and she can’t help but smile for the first time in ages.

_It’s the right color._ Perhaps red is not as cruel as she had thought. They talk about home. He says he doesn’t miss his, that it is just a _few fields_ and _a couple of cows_ , but she can read him better than that. She tells him of the mountains and the lake. They plan to run away.

Then she changes and he follows and she is pretty sure the bounty hunter is dead and that she killed him, and there is another boy with golden hair and a cloak the color of blood - _there is so much blood_ \- but she can see Merlin over his shoulder and the burning need to kill lessens and a gargoyle falls between her and the boy cloaked in rose.

Merlin is crying and trying to save her. She wants to tell him that there’s no point, that the gold-red boy’s sword bit deep and true. She has a feeling that he knows, though, because he is carrying her and when she opens her eyes there are mountains, and a lake. _He brought her home._ She feels herself slipping, but there are things she still needs to tell him, words still left unsaid.

_One day I will repay you. I_ _promise_. Because she owes him a debt greater than he knows.

_You already saved me. You made me feel loved._ Because it may be the last time she gets to tell him, and love is more important than Death.

He is crying, silver tears slipping down his cheeks, sky blue eyes clouded. _I don’t want you to go._ She wants to reach out and hold him tight, to say her last words of reassurance, but they falter on her tongue. Her vision fades to black.

_It’s alright._

_After all,_

_The monster always dies, in_

_the end._


End file.
